"Smuck you," she whispered.
"Now Missus, that ain't - isn't - nice," said Jim Dooley, and for a moment she thought the answering machine had, well, answered her. Then she realized this second version of Dooley's voice was in living color, so to speak, and had come from behind her. Once again feeling like an inhabitant in one of her own dreams, Lisey Landon turned around to face him.
3
She was dismayed by his ordinariness. Even standing in the doorway of her little neverwas barn office with a gun in one hand (he had what looked like a lunch-sack in the other), she wasn't sure she could have picked him out of a police lineup, assuming the other men in it were also slim, dressed in summerweight khaki workclothes, and wearing Portland Sea Dogs baseball caps. His face was narrow and unlined, the eyes bright blue - the face of a million Yankees, in other words, not to mention six or seven million hillbilly men from the mid-and deep South. He might have been six feet tall; he might have been a little under. The lick of hair which escaped the ball cap's round rim was an unremarkable sandy brown.
Lisey looked into the black eye of the pistol he held and felt the strength run out of her legs. This was no cheap hockshop .22, this was the real deal, a big automatic (she thought it was an automatic) that would make a big hole. She sat down on the edge of her desk. If the desk hadn't been there, she was pretty sure she would have gone sprawling on the floor. For a moment she was almost positive she was going to wet her pants, but she managed to hold her water. For the time being, at least.
"Take what you want," she whispered through lips that felt Novocain-numb. "Take all of it."
"Come upstairs, Missus," he said. "We'll talk about it upstairs."
The idea of being in Scott's study with this man filled her with horror and revulsion.
"No. Just take his papers and go. Leave me alone."
He stared at her patiently. At first glance he looked thirty-five. Then you saw the little fans of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth and realized he was five more than that, five at least. "Upstairs, Missus, unless you want to start this with a bullet in the foot. That'd be a painful way to talk bi'ness. There's a lot of bones and tendons in a person's foot."
"You won't...you don't dare...the noise..." Her voice sounded farther away with each word. It was as if her voice were on a train, and the train was pulling out of the station; her voice was leaning out of its window to bid her a fond farewell. Bye-bye, little Lisey, voice must leave you now, soon you'll be mute.
"Oh, the noise wouldn't fuss me a bit," Dooley said, looking amused. "Your next-door neighbors are gone - off to work, I 'magine - and your pet cop's off on a run." His smile faded, yet he still managed to look amused. "You've come all over gray. Reckon you've had quite a shock to the system. Reckon you're gonna pass clean out, Missus. Save me some trouble if you do, maybe."
"Stop...stop calling me..." Missus was how she wanted to finish, but a series of wings seemed to be enfolding her, wings of darker and darker gray. Before they grew too dark and too thick to see through, she was faintly aware of Dooley shoving the gun into the waistband of his pants ( Blow your balls off, Lisey thought dreamily, do the world a favor) and darting forward to catch her. She didn't know if he made it. Before the issue was decided, Lisey had fainted.
4
She became aware of something wet stroking her face and at first thought a dog was licking her - Louise, maybe. Except Lou had been their Collie back in Lisbon Falls, and Lisbon Falls had been a long time ago. She and Scott had never had a dog, maybe because they'd never had kids and the two things just naturally seemed to go together like peanut butter and jelly, or peaches and cr -
Come upstairs, Missus...unless you want to start this with a bullet in the foot. That brought her back fast. She opened her eyes and saw Dooley squatting before her with a damp washcloth in one hand, watching her: those bright blue eyes. She tried to pull away from them. There was a metallic rattle, then a dull thud of pain in her shoulder as something snubbed tight and stopped her. "Ow!"